Durham Police Dept. earns national gold acccreditation

Friday

Aug 1, 2014 at 3:15 AM

By Morgan Palmermpalmer@fosters.com

DURHAM — The town Police Department has been accredited in the gold standard by the nation’s police accreditation commission.

Two officials from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) spent time in Durham in April evaluating the department on its compliance to national standards. Their findings were then reported to the CALEA commission, which decided July 26 that the department would be accredited in the gold standard.

The Durham Police Department requested to be assessed by the commission’s gold standard, which requires a higher amount of compliance, at 80 percent. The department was found to be in compliance with 88.6 percent of CALEA’s standards.

“They fully agreed because we have an accredited hiring process, we end up hiring the right people for the town of Durham,” Police Chief David Kurz said. “Because we have the right training policies in place, we’re able to demonstrate a high skill set. I’m very proud of this organization.”

The CALEA assessment praised the department for having a low number of complaints and their significant amount of community outreach. The department was also found to have an extremely low amount of use of force.

“What’s wonderful about this is that they come in and validate my opinion, and where there’s something out of place, they would tell us that. That’s the beauty of it,” Kurz said. “ Operating the Police Department, we put ourselves at a significant exposure to risk. We do have people that carry guns and drive police cars and they engage with a lot of inherent risk every day. A lot of this is designed to ensure the town is protected from these exposures.”

A part of the assessment is geared toward finding where the department can improve. Some concerns that were expressed by the CALEA officials were a lack of space at the department, leaving the station with no room to expand. Kurz explained he would be looking to discuss the possibility of a rear expansion on the police station in the near future.

A second issue was the large number of traffic warnings and citations given to “others,” with no note of gender or race. This can lead to issues when compiling data.

“Bias policing is not a particular issue for us,” said Chief Kurz. “But when we gave traffic warnings, there was no gender written on the warnings, so they suggested we track that. And so we’ve taken steps to add that to our standardized form.”

Kurz added that both of these issues were not out of compliance with the CALEA standards, but were suggestions to make the department run more smoothly.

This accreditation will last for three years, with CALEA officials planning to return in April 2017. With the department now accredited in CALEA’s gold standard, the town’s insurance carrier, Primex, will reduce the annual premiums by 10 percent.